We failed to uncover anything. I quit seeing her.
Then a week after our last session, I woke from a dream and knew I’d gone back, that I’d remembered; but now, awake, I’d lost the thread. The only thing that remained was a single conviction, dredged out of the dark: I’d done something unforgivable. Something wicked, to Heather. Something my mind was desperate to keep locked away.
So I did. Dedicated myself all over again, with renewed fervor, to being perfect Jessica Miller, a wild success, every surface calm and beautiful. A woman who was unassailable. I needed everyone at Homecoming, all my classmates, to reflect that truth back to me, their eyes and words like mirrors showing the right picture. It was the most important thing, more important than whatever happened with Mint or Coop or Caro. It was life or death.
And here, in my most important moment, I was faltering.
“Jess.” Caro’s eyes were full of betrayal, suspicion—fear. “What did you do?”
Behold Caroline Rodriguez, finally reading someone right. Finally willing to believe the worst, and of her best friend, to boot. What extraordinarily bad timing.
Her voice was so loud that the football players stopped celebrating, turned, and stared. The crowd closest to us went quiet. We were suddenly, and inescapably, on display.
Frankie wrestled away from the players and strode to the back of the float. “What are you guys doing? You’re making a scene.”
“Jessica was about to explain how she’s a psycho freak who killed Heather,” Courtney said smugly. Oh, how the tables had turned.
Frankie spun to me. “What’s she talking about?”
“Did you cut up the pictures, Jessica, yes or no?” Eric watched me with a steady, unblinking gaze. Like everything he’d worked for had been leading to this moment.
“Yes.”
Caro sucked in a breath.
“Stop,” Coop begged. “You don’t owe them anything.”
“What are you talking about?” Mint turned to Coop with narrowed eyes. “What do you know about her that I don’t?”
I couldn’t take this. I had to get out. I looked over the railing at the crowd, who stared back at me, watching the terrible scene unfold like so many voyeurs.
“Did you apply for the Duquette fellowship?” Eric pressed.
There was no point denying it. “Yes.”
“Jess—” Coop hissed.
“Did Professor John Garvey write you a recommendation letter, like Heather’s?”
“Not like Heather’s.”
“But a letter?”
“A letter,” I agreed.
This time Eric’s voice boomed, his question ringing out over the sea of red and white, no microphone needed. Everywhere, faces turned to us. What a spectacle, what a show, like all my fondest dreams. The star of Homecoming.
“Did you kill my sister?”
Except in real life, I was the villain, not the hero.
The whole crowd tensed in anticipation.
I met Coop’s eyes, begging me. Mint’s eyes, hard and cold. Caro’s, full of horror.
It was buried in the black hole, spinning at the center of me, a darkness growing, eating the light: something unforgivable, something wicked.
Did I kill Heather?
I couldn’t look. And so I did the one thing my instincts had been screaming at me to do since the moment I’d spotted Eric at the party.
I vaulted over the railing, landing hard on the street, and pushed into the crowd.
People sprung back, as if my touch was poison.
From far away, someone shouted “Stop her!”
I ran for my life.
Chapter 32
February, senior year
I woke to sunshine, warm and gentle. I could tell, even with my eyes closed, that the world was full of light. I felt it on my face, sensed the glow through my closed eyelids. The sunlight reached inside me, into my rib cage, and filled me with peace. It felt like waking up on a Saturday morning when I was a child, bedroom full of sunshine, no cares in the world, nothing to do but play. Sometimes I wished I could dial back time, be a child again, stay forever in the before.
I opened my eyes.
Tall windows looked back at me. Outside those windows, tree branches, leafless but lit by the sun. It looked almost like a summer day, and for a dizzying moment I thought I had traveled in time.
But I knew those windows. And beneath them, the rows of easels. Worktables, and paint tubes, brushes half washed by lazy college students. This was the art studio, and I was lying on the floor. As soon as I recognized it, my muscles started aching.
What was I doing here?